


Like The Leaf Clings To The Tree

by burgundians



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-25 08:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10760268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burgundians/pseuds/burgundians
Summary: He wants to keep him, to bury him inside his ribs, to take the place of that dark, angry thing in him. Or, Credence Barebone has Percival Graves over for dinner.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally a drabble for a "first kiss" prompt by @intravenusann which spawned this. So really, this is all her fault. Written to Nina Simone's Wild is the Wind.

> _He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid._ \- Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

 

It is a frail, fluttering thing. Credence almost doesn’t believe it, not when he is so close he can feel the warm breath escaping his open mouth in a shuddering breath. He’s nervous too, and it’s a triumphant notion.

But Mr. Graves has taken to looking at him funny, first with guilt, then discomfort. 

And then tenderness. He’d looked at him with tenderness all evening, sitting down at Credence’s kitchen table, at his apartment, paid for by the assistant job in the archives they’d found him. It’s a weak compensation for MACUSA’s failure in his case, he knows it and they know it too.

This is not that. This is part of the little bedrocks of freedom he’d carved out for himself. Deciding whether to buy tomatoes instead of carrots, to make a library card, to smoke a cigarette. To pay for his own bills with his own money. To kiss somebody. That too was an act of freedom.

It is a small battle that wages inside him when he reaches forth and closes the miniscule space between them. Such a small thing, he thinks as he draws back almost immediately. He is not so free as to be unafraid of reproach.

Mr. Graves has a mole on his face, he thinks as a pair of hands reaches up to cup his cheeks. He likes to think that if he had ever touched him before he could have told them apart by that alone, but he was such a wretched thing in the winter of ‘26, all but torn apart that maybe he wouldn’t have. He is not that anymore. He can choose.

He reaches forward again, another fluttering kiss and Mr. Graves meets him half way.

Three, four, five, he’s lost count, he doesn’t know who is kissing whom anymore, he can’t think, his heart is beating out of his chest, his head is a ball of cotton, he presses a kiss to Mr. Graves’ lips, to his nose, to the corner of his eye where small lines form, to his mole.

He adores this man, he knows, and he knows that’s a weakness, but he is himself a weak thing. His hand clutches the fabric of a crisp white shirt when Mr. Graves reaches for his lips and his cheeks and kisses the little scar on the corner of his jaw.

He feels an exhale of breath at his throat and an urge to shelter the other man from his own ghosts. He wants to keep him, to bury him inside his ribs, to take the place of that dark, angry thing in him. He likes this, this odd dance they do, their dinners once a week, quiet and unstated, a reprieve from the rest of world. He likes it when the Director goes down to the archives with no real reason and the flimsiest excuse.

“It’s late.” He whispers, almost frightened to shatter the moment.

Mr. Graves freezes before starting to draw away but Credence is quicker. His arm tightens around those broad shoulders and he stills. His poor Mr. Graves, he thinks, this has been a trial for him too.

He will not lie and say that the first time he saw Mr. Graves he was not struck dumb. It is not every day he is looked at, much less by such a man. He doesn’t look like that now, a bit bereft, staring up at Credence when he extricates himself and stands up, offering him his hands. He decides he doesn’t mind, when the other man grabs them and pulls himself up.

Credence tugs him forwards, just four steps and at some point between his couch and his bedroom door, they laced their fingers together.

He quite likes his room. He’s lucky his bedroom is angled towards the east and he likes how the cream wallpaper looks when the sun pours inside in the morning, how the light glints off the water pitcher on the dresser. He admits the pot of blue bellflowers was an indulgence but he’s so used to caring for something.

Somebody else will know what his bedroom looks like in the morning.

Mr. Graves looks like a thing unravelling when Credence leads him towards the bed, sitting down heavily. His left hand reaches up to rub his eyes as he kicks off his shoes, his jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the kitchen. Credence tugs down the suspenders, watching as he unbuttons the waistcoat singlehandedly.

Once he’s shrugged out of his layers and in his undershirt, Credence's hands linger on those shoulders and Mr. Graves lets his head rest on Credence’s stomach for a second before gently allowing himself to be pushed back, and Credence rubs the left knee he knows pains him.

He covers the both of them with a quilt, even though the May heat is stifling even in the night. Even so, their legs tangle together and he can’t help but smile when he feels a kiss being laid on his temple.

~

Credence had woken with the sun as he usually does, feeling distinctively well-rested. Mr. Graves’ face had burrowed itself in his neck at some point in their sleep and had happily remained there. He drops a kiss on the other man’s forehead before slowly crawling out of the bed, tiptoeing across the room and closing the door as quietly as possible.

Of all the things in his apartment, he may like the plumbing the best, he thinks as he stands by the sink and splashes water on his face. It felt like such a luxury when he’d moved in. He puts the coffee pot on before heading to the bathroom down the hall.

The apartment is still silent when he returns and he opens the door slowly to see Mr. Graves leaning into his space on the bed, face down on his pillow. Credence kneels down and reaches out a hand to shake him and Mr. Graves quickly raises his head, hair mussed and bleary eyed. He sniffs and twitches his nose the slightest bit and Credence is so charmed he just has to kiss him.

“Good morning.” He whispers as his hand is unceremoniously grabbed and kissed.

“Hey. What time is it?”

“It’s early, around six. I figured you’d want to go home and change.”

“Thanks.” He squeezes Credence’s hand before he can move away and takes a deep breath. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you’d like to have breakfast with me.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” One thing Credence had always found extraordinarily pleasing about Mr. Graves was his voice. He had yet to hear it raised, simply because he didn’t have too. Mr. Graves wanted to be heard, so all others lowered theirs. But on that morning, his voice feels more like a tentative advance than an imposition.

It’s a heady thought but everything wants to be loved and he will not throw himself on a pyre for anything but. No one can ask more of him. Not now. Not after everything.

He lets his thumb stroke over the back of Mr. Graves’ hand before leaving the room.

It’s Director Graves that joins him in the kitchen, or one in the process of becoming, tie loose thrown over his shoulders. He takes his usual seat and oh.

Oh, this is nice.

He has  _his_  seat.

Credence should do something about the warmth that runs through him but at that exact moment Mr. Graves, eyes focused on  _The_   _New York Ghost_  on the table, bites into his toast and absently brushes away the falling crumbs from his waistcoat.

He hopes he won’t notice how his coffee mug shakes. He doesn’t know what the rest of the day will bring, once they leave this halfway point of the world that his apartment somehow became. Around them, he hears the building waking up, the pitter patter of the Swedish girl’s heels above him as she leaves for the day.

He’s been reading the Bible lately, properly, without his Ma hovering over them in all of her Old Testament righteousness. He’s found refuge in Proverbs 10:12, claimed it, tenderly underlined it in the old Book he keeps by his bedside even now.

_Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins._

He’s read about a group of witches in Southern Europe, “Old magic” the book had claimed, that live by the idea that faith and magic is one and the same and always has been. He quite likes that thought, if only to feel like his life has been less of a mistake than it really has. It is odd, but he does feel less sick than he ever remembers being. He had grown accustomed to aching joints and sharp, persistent pains and a sluggish mind, like a cold he never quite cured.

Today feels like an exceptionally good day, even if he does have to go down into the bowels of MACUSA and stay there all day. He usually spends his lunch break with Tina, even though Queenie has begged him not to let her sister anywhere near the hot dog vendors. He can’t refuse Tina anything so he doesn’t bother to try.

Mr. Graves leaves a little coffee at the bottom of the cup. He doesn’t have to get up and put the empty mugs in the sink but he needs it. Needs to move, to think, because he feels so at peace at that moment, so flooded with fondness for the people and routines that make up his daily life. Credence hears a chair drag across the floor and when he turns around his face is captured by a pair of warm hands.

Oh. He doesn’t think he’ll ever really get used to this, not truly, not the way Mr. Graves kisses him so sweetly.

“I have to go.” Mr. Graves says but he doesn’t look like he wants to.

“Alright.”  A thumb comes down to swipe at the corner of his mouth and he can’t help the smile.

“What if I steal you away for lunch?”

“I’m meeting Tina.”

“Alright.” Mr. Graves shoots him a fond smile and Credence can’t resist inching forward and dropping a kiss on his forehead. It’ll be different in the Woolworth Building, the Director and the archive boy aren’t meant to cross paths. But not in here, not in his home.

In his home, he’ll kiss Percival Graves if he wants.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly couldn't help myself from writing Percival's point of view.

 

 

> _You have not grown old, and it is not too late_. _To dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret._ – Rainer Maria Rilke

 

He doesn’t like his house anymore, he thought as he stepped foot into it the first time since leaving the hospital. His sister-in-law, in black since the war, had helped him through the threshold and all he had wanted to do was turn around and walk into the Hudson.

But life goes on, as it is wont to do. He eventually talks Clothilde into going back home, her own empty house now that the two youngest Graves are at Ilvermorny. His brother had raised more than a few eyebrows when he’d shown up with his cajun bride, cutting through the dour propriety of the Graves household like a knife.

Returning to work was strange and mildly unpleasant. The crushing silence of his imprisonment, the cautious one of his stay in the hospital, the companiable one of Clothilde offer little preparation to a return to MACUSA. His office provides a quiet reprieve when needed, as does the roof and he picks up smoking again much to his chagrin.

It’s Seraphina that mentions the presence of Credence Barebone, newly released from the hospital, in the building. A position had been found for him where he can do little harm and that’s that, apparently.

He respects and cares for the President a great deal but he’s well aware she has all the sensibility of a cactus. He’s much the same but the whole affair is steeped in callousness and that doesn’t sit well with him. He has never been able to accept loose ends and this is a particularly volatile one.

His need to see with his own eyes proves very anticlimactic.

Credence seems more at peace than any of the times he’s seen him before, but he’s very much the same. The hair is growing out but there’s still a caution to his every movement. There’s a moment’s shock before Credence schools his features into professional detachment.  _Prideful thing_ , he thinks and is surprised at the rush of fondness.

He doesn’t want to admit to himself why he keeps going down to the archives, tells himself it’s just another safe harbor in a storm, but he does and one day Credence invites him over for dinner.

He should say no but he doesn’t want to go home either.

Credence has a little place in the East Village. It’s a third of his own house but Percival is quite charmed by it. There’s care in the little details, the gently handled dishware, the small stack of notebooks (remedial lessons, Credence answers his curious glance).

It took him a while to truly see Credence Barebone, the person, in contrast with Credence Barebone, the walking failure of MACUSA’s policies.

Percival is aware he’s too old, occupies too high a position. But then again, who is he to tell Credence what to do? Credence is his own person at long last, he doesn’t  _need_  Percival. He can live his life without him. It’s when he finally accepts this that he allows himself to truly look. It’s a small revelation that occurs in him.

They were unfair to Dorcas Twelvetrees. He’s seen many a head turned by less than a Barebone.

He can’t make himself stay away. Every Wednesday, a tall figure hesitates on the lobby of the Woolsworth, and Percival Graves definitely doesn’t rush over. He doesn’t draw a sharp breath when Credence smiles at him in acknowledgement. His left hand doesn’t clench when he holds out his right arm to Apparate them away.

It’s a comfort that becomes a habit.

An understandable curiosity and concern starts to fall to pieces after the sixth week of this strange thing and Percival has to come to term with the facts. He likes him, his quiet conversation, his long silences, the unobtrusiveness of it all. He’s just too fond of Credence to stop.

One night it all comes to a head. One night Credence kisses him and he doesn’t go home. Credence takes his hands and takes him into his bed. There’s a sacredness to the move and he’s loath to disrupt it. Percival allows himself to be divested of his waistcoat, his shirt, his shoes, to let his head rest on that stomach. He has never been so tentative with possible lovers but the young man isn’t just a possible lover, no matter how much he may want him. 

He wants to drink from those lips, to breathe the same air. He wants to fall asleep cradled by those thighs.

Two out of three. He did fall asleep in that marvelous space where shoulder meets neck and that’s not nothing.

He’s genuinely fond of him. That is the most worrisome aspect. A physical interest wouldn’t be unthinkable, he has eyes, after all, but he likes spending time with Credence, likes the comfort he finds in his presence. He leaves Credence’s house the next day, well-rested and well-fed and his own has never felt less desirable a destination.

He goes back the next Wednesday, because of course he does. He has deprived himself of comforts all his life, but he will not deprive himself of this.

When they Apparate a few streets away, he feels fingers sliding to his hand.

“Is this alright?” It’s half a whisper, but there’s bravery there too and Percival couldn’t be more charmed if he tried.

“Yeah.” His face twists in a badly suppressed smile.

They jump apart just two feet away from Credence’s apartment door when the next one over opens and a middle aged, heavy set man pokes his head out.

“Hello, Mr. Dreyfuss.” Credence greets, fumbling through his coat pockets.

Mr. Dreyfuss smiles at Credence before turning a steely look on Graves.

“Percival Graves.” He reaches out a hand, which Dreyfuss takes in a stronger than truly necessary grip.

“Yeah, I saw you on Thursday.” He replies flatly.

 _Thursday_.

Percival clears his throat just as Credence anxiously announces the discovery of his keys.

“I’ll see you later, Mr. Dreyfuss.” He hears Credence say as he’s shepherded inside the apartment.

Percival shrugs off his coat before sitting down on the couch.

“I don’t think your neighbor likes me very much.” He announces, grabbing hold of Credence’s hand as he passed him, arms laden with coats.

“That’s good, I would hate competition.” It takes him a second to realize Credence has made a joke and he can’t resist tugging him down on his lap in a flurry of fabric.

Credence falls with a squeak which Percival simply must devour.

Percival likes this arrangement they have, a gentle balance like a sail boat adrift. He appreciates the quietness of it, the peacefulness. He knows Credence cares for him, can see it in his eyes every time he looks at him, but he asks him for nothing in return. He’s welcome to share in his tenderness, in the comfort of his house.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had too much fun planing Credence's apartment. You can find me @ braganzas (my fandom sideblog)


End file.
